Zinara struggling to cope with pressure of issuing new vehicle licences

HUNDREDS of motorists yesterday flooded Zimpost offices in Bulawayo to renew their vehicle licences amid reports that the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration is struggling to cope with the pressure of issuing new vehicle licences amid revelations that their system was down.

Licences expired at midnight on Thursday, 31 January.

As early as 7am, long winding queues were observed at Zimpost offices in the city centre, Belmont and Famona.

In separate interviews, motorists said they came as early as 5am in order to be served first.

"I came here at around 5am but  I am still in the queue because the service is slow. Zimpost should improve their services," said a motorist at the Main Post Office.

Zimpost security officers had to intervene to quell the commotion at the Main Post Office as motorists jostled to get quick service.

This was after motorists who were reportedly given numbers in the queue, came late resulting in quarrels with those who were already in the queue.

Among the motorists were the elderly who demanded to be served first as senior citizens.

"These people should have a separate counter for old people like us or serve us first," said a visibly disgruntled elderly man.

"There are only two tellers serving all the people who are here, it will be impossible for them to serve all these people," said another motorist.

According to traffic laws, motorists who fail to register their vehicles risk being arrested or having their vehicles impounded.

The Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) is responsible for collecting the                        licence fees, which are used together with               tollgate fees, overload fees and transit fees to maintain the country's roads and construct new ones.

Licence discs per vehicle per term are $15 for motorcycles and $20 for small cars. Owners of vehicles between three and seven tonnes fork out $45 while for vehicles above seven tonnes but below nine tonnes, the fees are $60 and those more than nine tonnes are $75.

Our Harare Bureau reports that Zinara is struggling to cope.

Motorists yesterday said they had failed to renew their licences as there were long queues at the Harare Main Post Office and CBZ Bank forcing them to defer the programme until next week.

"I went to Zimpost yesterday (Thursday) and found that there was a very long queue and their system was taking very long to process licences so I had to go away," Harare motorist Miss Norest Chinake said.

Another motorist Gibson Tanga, said he had been advised to come back on Monday or Tuesday when most people would have cleared and the system expected to have been resuscitated.

A third motorist, however, said she was going to secure the licence through her bank ' NMB Bank that is an agent of Zinara so she was not worried about the current chaos in the licensing system.

Zinara head-administration and human resources, Mr Precious Murove, conceded that they had been facing challenges with their system but said they had since addressed the issue.

"Our system was down yesterday (Thursday) but we have managed to address the problem and we are working normally as you can see. On Thursday, we only managed to process 9 000 licences because of the problem. Under normal circumstances, we do between 20 000 and 25 000 licences a day," he said.

He added that they had so far renewed licences of 230 000 vehicles out of the 418 000 vehicles in their database.

They have engaged CBZ Bank, ZABG Bank, Met Bank and Zimpost to be their agents through which motorists can buy or renew their licences.

Zinara, he said, would not be penalising motorists for failing to renew their licences until the 30-day reprieve provided for in the Roads Act expires at the end of this month.

"Our system is automated to start charging penalties for late licence renewals only after 30 days so we cannot penalise anyone before that period lapses," he said.